I’m always interested (and sometimes appalled) in what others put in their shopping trolleys so I thought it would be a good idea to put together a post showcasing our weekly healthy shopping list! Eating well does not need to be hard, nor expensive (that is a post for another day).  Keep things nice and simple and generally shop around the peripheries (outside aisles) of the supermarket and you will be on your way to having a weekly healthy shopping list! Learning to ignore the specials on the junky processed food is a bit of an art however once you have had some practice you won’t even notice them any more. 

Our Weekly Healthy Shopping List

Okay, so some of these items we don’t purchase every week as they last a lot longer than that, however I thought I’d include them in my weekly healthy shopping list so that you can see the things we try to have on hand at all times.I’ve only included food items so have not included toiletries or cleaning products and the like.  I’ve split the weekly healthy shopping list up into sections and of course there are some miscellaneous items which don’t really fall in to any of those categories, these are listed below:

• Rice
• Couscous
• Rolled or Quick Oats 
• Flour (for the rare occasion we make our own bread – definitely not a weekly purchase)

• Kumara
• Carrots
• 2KG of Frozen Vegetables (Generally a broccoli, cauliflower, bean and carrot mix)
• Avocados (When not horrendously expensive)
• Dried dates.
• Shredded coconut or coconut chips
• Coconut cream or milk
• Crushed Garlic
• Crushed Ginger
• Mixed Herbs
• Paprika
• Turmeric
• Tinned Crushed Tomatos
• Onion & Garlic powder. 
• Other various herbs and spices. 

That is seriously about the gist of it, with the exception of a little bit of fruit on occasion (both our work’s supply fruit hence not really purchasing a lot), generally a few apples and sometimes whatever yummy fruit is in season like pineapple, feijoas and mangos. I would recommend that you have bananas on your list as well as they are so versatile – I can’t stand the texture of a plain banana but they can be turned into some yummy creations – 1 ingredient healthy ice cream anyone? We do also purchase different vegetables occasionally when they are on sale, sometimes some cabbage, leeks or pumpkin. We do also sometimes purchase potato’s however kumara (sweet potato) have been reasonably priced the past few months and we both prefer kumara over potato. Generally whenever I see a cool sounding recipe that has a different herb or spice in it we will pick that herb or spice up from the supermarket as well, we have a rather large collection of them now! 

I’m not a huge dairy fan and we don’t eat a lot of dairy so the list is pretty short! 

• Milk Powder
• Yoghurt Sachet

Yep, that’s it in the dairy department! We don’t drink enough milk to warrant buying a litre or more at a time and powdered milk is a whole lot more convenient for our lifestyle at the moment. We also use the milk powder to make our own yoghurt with every second yoghurt batch. We keep a little bit of the made up yoghurt and then add milk powder and water and pop back into the easiyo maker to make our own batch. Very occasionally we will buy a made up tub of yoghurt for a treat (we did this past weekend!), and even more occasionally we will purchase a little bit of cheese but this is not very often at all, maybe once or twice a year. 

Ahhh protein, this is where a decent chunk of our bill goes! Some weeks our trolley is literally meat, a tray or two of eggs and a few vegetables and that is seriously about it! We are both meat eaters and eat meat at every meal (generally – although we don’t have a lot at breakfast) so it does take up the most space in our shopping trolley. We have been trying to vary the meat we have been eating lately as we went through a phase of having a lot of chicken breast and not a lot else. Now we shop depending on what is cheap that week. 

• Chicken Breast 
• Prime Mince
• Bolar Roast Beef
• Salmon
• Eggs

We do vary greatly depending on what meat is on sale but the above are quiet often in our trolley. We always get at least one small pack of Salmon and always a tray or two of chicken breast and the rest is just made up of whatever is on sale. The past few weeks rump steak was on sale so we had that – both as steak and as slow cooks and this week prime mince was on sale as well as trim pork so we grabbed some of that. We always end up buying a lot of eggs, some weeks one try and more often than not we will get two trays. Eggs are staples for breakfasts most days and Kyle also takes boiled eggs to work. 

We don’t eat a lot of non-meat protein other than the eggs and the protein from the yoghurt/milk but this is where you could stock up on things like lentils and beans if you were a non-meat eater. 

• Almonds
• Cashews
• Walnuts
• Sunflower Seeds
• Pumpkin Seeds
• Hazelnuts
• Coconut Oil
• Nut Butters
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil

I’ve mentioned avocados, coconut cream and eggs in the above different sections so I didn’t mention them again but they are a great way to get some healthy fats into your diet. Other than those we really only stock up on various nuts and seeds and generally we go to a bulk food store to get the Almonds and Cashews as they are not cheap in the supermarket (well they are not cheap anywhere really!). I buy the small packs of walnuts and hazelnuts you find in the baking section of the supermarket as they are the perfect size to make my homemade no grain-ola. 

So there we have it, our weekly healthy shopping list! I’ve no doubt forgot something, if I remember anything I’ll update the list. 

What am I missing that you always have on hand??